MaudlinMutantMollusk:Number 7 is way too freakin true. Not a single day passes at work that I don't hear it

/I've been doing this stuff too long

Agreed. What the hell can you do except clear cookies and temp files, run Malware and Virus scans and maybe reset default settings in the browser? I have only been doing this for about 6-8 years, but I am filled with hatred for most people now.

I am a master of the mute button so I can vent my spleen. If that thing ever breaks, I will be out of a job.

AdolfOliverPanties:MaudlinMutantMollusk: Number 7 is way too freakin true. Not a single day passes at work that I don't hear it

/I've been doing this stuff too long

Agreed. What the hell can you do except clear cookies and temp files, run Malware and Virus scans and maybe reset default settings in the browser? I have only been doing this for about 6-8 years, but I am filled with hatred for most people now.

I am a master of the mute button so I can vent my spleen. If that thing ever breaks, I will be out of a job.

Heh... people would be very surprised if they heard what goes on in tech support during their calls

/especially when you get the same people a number of times//and they ask the same damned stupid questions

...back in my help desk days, that line was uttered at least 500 times a day, made all the more maddening in that they seemed unaware they were stating the opposite of what they meant, but they all said it like that.

You have not experienced real wonder unless the person is sure it is a ghost causing the problems, and not the fact cables are coming unplugged. After explaining ghosts can not use tools and screwing the cables in place the problem disappeared but the symptom of crazy remained in the hospital administrator

Me: "Okay, let me connect to your computer and take a look. What's your computer name?" (we give each machine a specific name in AD, then connect through VNC Viewer, RDP or whatever through that name or IP Address.)

Customer: "Um, I call it Bob."

Me: (HITS MUTE BUTTON) "Oh, you're so farking funny. What a clever wit! Why are you slaving behind a computer instead of selling out Madison Square Garden with your stand-up act every night you farking turd?"

Me: (gritting my teeth) "Oh really? Mine's Fred." (I then hate myself for playing along with this asshole.)

AdolfOliverPanties:Me: "Okay, let me connect to your computer and take a look. What's your computer name?" (we give each machine a specific name in AD, then connect through VNC Viewer, RDP or whatever through that name or IP Address.)

Customer: "Um, I call it Bob."

Me: (HITS MUTE BUTTON) "Oh, you're so farking funny. What a clever wit! Why are you slaving behind a computer instead of selling out Madison Square Garden with your stand-up act every night you farking turd?"

Me: (gritting my teeth) "Oh really? Mine's Fred." (I then hate myself for playing along with this asshole.)

Me: (pulling my farking hair out) "No, that's the brand. I need the name we gave it. It should be there on your desktop wallpaper or on the sticker on the top of the tower."

Customer: "It's not on my desktop screen. And there is no sticker."

Me: "Oh? What's on your desktop screen?"

Customer: "My email."

Me: (slamming my head on the desk) "No, that's not your desktop wallpaper. Minimize all your open programs and tell me what you see in the lower right hand corner of the screen."

Customer: "Oh! Look at that. It says Computer name......."

Several times a week. And they almost always call their computer Bob. What the fark?

My computer doesn't have none of that stuff (translation: "I'm too lazy to look"). Can't you just send someone to look at it? No, I mean send them right now! What do you mean I have to wait? Don't you have someone down there who can come RIGHT NOW?? I can't hear my music without the sound on my computer!

Just in time for customer service week, too, I see. Well, now. I spend the day logging on to other people's PCs and doing things like shrinking the browser that has every farking available tool bar and add on strapped to it like a German lesbian with ADD. Then, I ask them to open their email account so I can attach a file to an email because they were unable to do that, either. You would be amazed at how many of them have not only extremely personal emails open right then and there, but also how many people have rather personal IM windows popping up while I am logged onto their PC. I don't mind helping people out because that is what I do. I like being the most patient tech in the room, and setting an example for the younger kids who get pissed easily when people just can't function. I don't mind hearing a person in an executive position tell me, "I don't know nothing about no computers" because that tells me the economy is doing fine, anyone can get hired. And it tells me I can get hired anywhere, too. I have heard the most outrageous things from customer, but it's all in a day's work. I actually have never had a sit down job before, having been a factory worker, a furniture delivery guy, a UPS guy, a Cop, a baker, a chef, and an antiques dealer before. This job is nice. I get to sit on my ass all day. I wear fancy leather headphones. My Phone is in my PC. I get breaks. They buy cakes. They buy bagels. They throw us parties. I get weekends, nights, and paid vacations off. I cannot complain. I'm employed and others are not. I feel fortunate. I get to work with some of the brightest people in my state, too. But so help me god, the next person who calls me and doesn't know what time zone they are in is going to get a box of horse poop mailed to them.

"I'm legally blind, but I'm a confident and fiercely independent woman. I'm new on this job and I DON'T want anyone thinking they made a bad hire, so don't even ask me to bring in a co-worker. I can't see my screen beyond a slight glow and have literally never worked with computers before. Now then, I'm told that our monthly reports are not uploading correctly, and that is all I know. What do I have to do to fix it?"

My boss is so computer illiterate, he still uses AOL as his homepage. I was trying to log into Salesforce for him but I couldn't figure out the stupid AOL layout. When it took me an extra second to just pop open a browser, he kept insisting we call IT.

I don't work IT, but I do sell recording (DAW) software and Audio-Digital (A/D) peripherals. I swear there hasn't been one customer that I've sold to that doesn't call me a day or three later because they "can't get it to work." I regularly have to have them bring their gear or make a house call just to turn a knob or download the latest driver - all of which COULD be done over the phone, but they simply don't even understand what a driver is.

Yeah, my last gig as an IT Manager was for a company owned by a born-again Christian. One of our salespeople is gay. Working on his laptop, I found some (a huge shiat-ton) of gay porn. Job requirement was to report any "improper" programs or data found on company-owned equipment.

Babwa Wawa:UberDave: I can see those as annoying but are they really that big of a deal? Most are simple to solve. The calls that should be "dreaded" are the ones that are legitimate but they can't solve

Yeah, this is just a sysadmin biatch list. You want to know what I dread? "The data center's on fire".

I always dread the call that's basically, "I don't understand technology at all so I'm incapable of realizing the thing I'm calling you about is completely beyond your control, but I'm none-the-less going to scream and berate you over it while demanding you fix it immediately."

kid_icarus:I don't understand technology at all so I'm incapable of realizing the thing I'm calling you about is completely beyond your control

Yeah, I had a remote user in North Carolina (the data center is in NorCal) who biatched constantly how slow "the servers" were. I must have explained ten thousand times that his piss-poor ISP was to blame, not us. He refused to go from DSL (with a like, 10,000 foot cable run to the CO) to cable (which had 5mb available for his address; I checked) because it cost like $40 more a month.

And because he was a salesman, he kept playing the "it's costing the company MONEY!" card so every time I had to re-explain it to management. Even going so far as to white-board "How The Internet Really Works."

dramboxf:Snarcoleptic_Hoosier: "Is there going to be anything I don't WANT to find (porn)?"

Yeah, my last gig as an IT Manager was for a company owned by a born-again Christian. One of our salespeople is gay. Working on his laptop, I found some (a huge shiat-ton) of gay porn. Job requirement was to report any "improper" programs or data found on company-owned equipment.

THAT was an aaaaawkward conversation.

I bet.

There are some really fun ones in my collection. My all-time favorite is from this guy I knew in college (tall, really skinny, very bookish) "N****r Sluts F***ing Horses". It cost him a LOT to keep me quiet (I don't give his name, and that's all I can promise).

Then I had to call the user, who was sorta-kinda a friend of mine and chew him out for putting me in that position.

I think my all-time favorite "can I ask a question" thing was when I was a phone monkey for AOL back around 1994 or so. Guy calls and asks if it's possible to have two monitors on a single computer, but both showing the same thing. This was before dual-head video cards were common and inexpensive, and so I told him I'm sure it was possible, but it depended on how far from the computer the second monitor was going to be.

"33 miles."

Turns out he wanted to watch what his wife was doing during the day while he was at work. I stupidly asked why he would want to do that, and the call went OFF THE RAILS. At the time we were graded on call time. <4 minutes was the goal. This one ended up taking almost an hour because we had a rule that we couldn't disconnect until the customer did unless they were using foul language.

He proceeds to tell me about how when he got married his wife was fat, and since she joined AOL six months ago she'd lost a ton of weight and basically spent all day in the AOL chat rooms. He was convinced she was having a cyber affair and was getting ready to turn it into a real one, and that's why he wanted to "monitor" her usage.

He treated me like a psychologist he was unloading onto. I kept saying, "Sir, this is REALLY a conversation you should have with your wife..." My supervisor came over and plugged in his headset to listen to me try to handle this guy...then smiled, shook his head in sympathy and wandered back to his own cube.

leftteffticle:UberDave: I can see those as annoying but are they really that big of a deal? Most are simple to solve. The calls that should be "dreaded" are the ones that are legitimate but they can't solve

Truth. Any issue I can actually solve quickly and get the person on their way is a good one, no matter how annoying or trivial.

Not only that - they may be clueless but if you solve their problem they will be happy as a pig in shiat.

I had a client that used to call me for relatively simple things. I used to have to dictate sql queries to him over the phone while he "hunt and pecked" the keyboard or we would spend 30 minutes finding out where some "button" was in the software he was using. It was tedious but every time we were done it was like I just made his millennium.

Babwa Wawa:UberDave: I can see those as annoying but are they really that big of a deal? Most are simple to solve. The calls that should be "dreaded" are the ones that are legitimate but they can't solve

Yeah, this is just a sysadmin biatch list. You want to know what I dread? "The data center's on fire".

But be honest. You don't dread the data center burning to a cinder, you dread having to restore an ass-ton of data on new hardware. :)

AdolfOliverPanties:MaudlinMutantMollusk: Number 7 is way too freakin true. Not a single day passes at work that I don't hear it

/I've been doing this stuff too long

Agreed. What the hell can you do except clear cookies and temp files, run Malware and Virus scans and maybe reset default settings in the browser? I have only been doing this for about 6-8 years, but I am filled with hatred for most people now.

I am a master of the mute button so I can vent my spleen. If that thing ever breaks, I will be out of a job.

Ahh the mute button. lol I vent over Lync within the group chat of co-workers supporting the same clients :p

8. "My computer has a virus, but I clicked the prompt to update my antivirus software yesterday."

Ok IT guys, seriously, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Choose one of these things to not happen, and I will be happy to comply. But you can't tell me to update my computer every time AND tell me NOT to click update whenever it comes up. That is literally impossible.